Lost? Confused? Unable to understand your teens? Don’t worry; you’re in good company. Keeping up with latest teen slang terms is nearly impossible. New words are constantly being introduced, thanks to the influence of music, the Internet, apps, and celebrities (not to mention regional vernacular!). You may feel overwhelmed and lost when listening to your children/ grandchildren speaking, and it’ll only get worse when reading social media posts and hashtags. Use this guide as a reference for what’s widely popular right now in order to translate what teens are saying. Read More

The youth of America are abusing booze less and weed more, according to a new study that looked at two decades of data on teens and school-aged children who wound up seeking medical care after taking various substances.

Adolescent cannabis abuse has increased by a whopping 245 percent in the US since 2000, the new research finds, with a particularly dramatic rise occurring in just the past few years.

At the same time, rates of alcohol abuse have declined among those aged between 6 and 18 years. Back in 2000, alcohol was in the top spot on the rather worrying list compiled from a US national poisons database, which records information on calls to poison helplines. Now, it sits in third place... Read More

During the coronavirus pandemic, pediatric endocrinologists saw a new surge of referrals for girls with early puberty. Recent retrospective studies from Germany and Turkey show that the number of these referrals doubled or even tripled during the lockdown periods of 2020 (this at a time when many families may have been avoiding non-emergency doctor’s visits for fear of covid-19). A paper published in August in the journal Frontiers in Pediatrics, which analyzed data from South Korea’s national statistics portal, found that the number of children diagnosed with precocious puberty almost doubled between 2016 and 2021, with a sharp post-2020 spike. The rise in early puberty “is a phenomenon that is occurring all over the world,” Frank M. Biro, the former director of the adolescent-medicine division at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, told me. (Although there has also been a rise among boys, girls experiencing early puberty still vastly outnumber them.)

in the midst of what is increasingly understood to be a post-covid youth mental-health crisis, the startling new uptick in early puberty is troubling to some physicians and parents. But, because the spike appears to have been triggered within a compressed, well-defined timeframe, it also offers rich terrain for better understanding the condition’s causes and effects. It also provides a chance to rethink puberty: to see it not as a gateway into adulthood but as another stage of childhood—one that is highly variable from kid to kid and need not be cause for alarm.

“We are in a great natural experiment at the moment, and we might not know the results of it for another ten years or more,” Louise Greenspan, a pediatric endocrinologist at Kaiser Permanente, San Francisco, said. “I do wonder if this is going to be a cohort of kids whose puberty was more rapid because they were in a critical window of susceptibility during a time of great social upheaval.” Read More

There is substantial evidence that the pandemic has increased the number of adolescents (and even some pre-adolescents) who are anxious. It’s no wonder, given that Covid lockdowns and distancing robbed teenagers of many of the activities they care about most, disrupted their education, and isolated them from their friends. We’re all hoping that as life returns to something like normal, adolescents will rebound. But anxiety in adolescents was already on the rise before the pandemic. Why? Experts cite increased pressure to succeed in school, a world that feels scarier and the toll social media can take on self-esteem. But nobody really understands it. It’s important to recognize the signs of anxiety, and get kids who are struggling help. Read More

When most people think of an eating disorder, what comes to mind is a painfully thin young woman who eats almost nothing. But there are actually three common eating disorders. Not everyone with an eating disorder appears underweight, and not all are women. Read More

If you’re parenting a rebellious teen, consider this a hug from a fellow mom who feels your pain and sorrow. But before we get to some practical advice on parenting a rebellious teen, let’s talk about some ground rules that will put us on the right footing.

It’s not about you. This is the hardest thing for any parent to grasp—that we are not responsible for our children’s actions. The child is responsible for their actions. The parent does not produce the child—the child produces the child. So when your teen rebels, it’s more a statement about them than you.

It’s not a reflection of your parenting. This goes hand-in-hand with the first point. You can do everything right, and your teenager can still choose to do the wrong thing. This is because your teenager has the same sinful nature as every other person in the world, which means they can pick sinful things.

But take heart! Some general guidelines should help you as you raise a rebellious teenager. While this article won’t solve the problem entirely, I hope you’ll find these 11 tips helpful and encouraging as you continue this difficult parenting journey. Read More